Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. –Theodore Roosevelt

On the Border

I’m ten days past due on sending out the newsletter. This is a bit embarrassing, but life got insanely busy there for a while. Evan and I left home on January 20. From there, we:

delivered our youngest to his first semester of college in Vermont

got caught in the north end of the East Coast’s Snowmageddon, but got out ahead of the worst of it

went back home for 24 hours, packed up the car and the dog, and handed the key to the house sitter

drove to Salt Lake City in two days (850 miles)

put me on a plane to a very snowed-in DC for a NARAL meeting while Evan spent three days photographing Arches National Park

flew me back to SLC, where we got snowed in again

drove to Moab UT and spent a sublime afternoon together in Arches, which we had almost entirely to ourselves

drove to Sedona AZ through Monument Valley and the Big Rez — 350 miles at 45 mph in a massive snowstorm

(do you see a theme emerging here?)

drove from Sedona to Tucson to attend the Tucson Gem Show

Sara filled her pockets with pretty rocks

Evan photographed the nature at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

and drove from Tucson to Tombstone, where we are tonight.

Adding it all up, we’ve been snowed on in ten states from coast to coast and border to border — WA, OR, ID, UT, AZ, VT, NH, MA, CT, and VA, plus the District of Columbia. Which is pretty ironic, when you consider that we headed south in search of sunshine, which mostly didn’t happen until just the last few days. The nights here, 20 miles north of the Mexican border, are just as bitterly cold as they were in Vermont; but the days, at least, are clear and sunny, 60-degrees-plus, and warming up by the day. The local weathermen taunt us with the promise that at some point this week, we might finally see 80.

From here, it’s east to El Paso, Marfa, and San Antonio, where we plan to schmoo around for a while before heading back north through Santa Fe and the Rockies. We’ll see home again sometime the first week in March.

I’ve been ambivalent about blogging this adventure, but have finally decided that hey, what the hell, it’s MY blog –and if I want to write travel stuff, I can totally do that. There’s a lot to talk about: Arcosanti, the gem show, the southern lonesome end of the Wild West we now find ourselves in. And now that we’ve dropped back into an easy road-trip-wandering gear, there will more time to tell you about all of it.

That’s all for now. There may be another post or two between now and Tuesday, when the next newsletter will drop. For now, though, I’ll let Evan tell his part of the story. (The full album is here.)

About

Sara Robinson is a Seattle-based futurist and veteran blogger on culture, politics, and religion. Since 2006, her work (gathered in the Archive section of this blog) regularly appeared at Orcinus, Our Future, Group News Blog, and Alternet. She's also written for Salon, Huffington Post, Grist, the New Republic, New York Magazine, Firedoglake, and many other sites.

Robinson holds an MS in Futures Studies from the University of Houston, and a BA in Journalism from the USC Annenberg School of Communication. She was a Schumann Fellow, and also held senior fellowships at the Campaign for America's Future and the Commonweal Foundation. She currently serves on the national board of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

This is her personal website: a writer's workspace bringing together old friends, new ideas, past work, and future projects.